XP Home -> Professional upgrade, any point?

Beren · 25 May 2009 at 16:12

Hi,
I bought a system off MM a while back with XP home on it, was doing a clearout and realized that I have a legit copy of XP pro sitting around not doing anything and was thinking about upgrading.

Is there an easier way than a clean install to do it? Equally importantly, is there any point? Have some kind of memory of it having better multiprocessor support, but didn't know if that counted Core2 set ups or not.

I will probably buy a new HD in the next month or two anyway and will probably just wait till then and do a clean install on that.

Any advice appreciated.

pingwing · 25 May 2009 at 16:17

Clean install was the only way to change i think.

Pro has some more features for a working environment and support for multiple proc's (but both home and pro can handle multi core cpu's)

Basically theres not a lot of difference from what i remember how your using it.

dirtydog · 25 May 2009 at 16:32

No point at all basically. Unless you have more than one physical CPU which I'm assuming you don't.

cokecan · 25 May 2009 at 16:34

the only benefit for me is the gpedit stuff, particularly being able to assign scripts to run at logon and logoff for the few machines in my house. one to map network drives and the other to run a robocopy backup script

linktoinsanity · 25 May 2009 at 17:37

You may as well use Professional when you install a new hard disk if you have it sitting around. XP Professional is supposed to be more stable than XP Home, but there's not really any point in upgrading imo.

dirtydog · 25 May 2009 at 17:41

LinktoInsanity said:
XP Professional is supposed to be more stable than XP Home

That is an old wives' tale

linktoinsanity · 25 May 2009 at 17:42

dirtydog said:
That is an old wives' tale

Ok, ignore that then

Audigex · 25 May 2009 at 18:06

I never noticed any difference between the two in general use. Pro has a few more networking features (or rather, easier access to them) but there's very little else. You may aswell use it if you can, but don't buy it if you have home lying around.

J.B · 25 May 2009 at 19:02

Unless you are planning on joining a domain I dont think there is a huge difference.

Beren · 25 May 2009 at 20:46

Fair enough - thanks for the advice, will leave till next hardware change and then install it then, if I'm not using windows 7 or whatever it is going to be call by the time I have the money for my next upgrade!

bledd · 26 May 2009 at 10:36

pro remembers network passwords, home doesn't
pro has remote desktop, home doesn't
pro can join domains, home can't

^the 3 main differences

cokecan · 26 May 2009 at 12:29

home has remote desktop viewer and you can also add full remote desktop into it with a bit of trickery and google if you were really bothered about using it

miniyazz · 26 May 2009 at 15:56

cokecan72 said:
home has remote desktop viewer and you can also add full remote desktop into it with a bit of trickery and google if you were really bothered about using it

Indeed you can. You have to do a bit more trickery to be able to be logged on on two accounts on the same computer (one at the computer and one remotely) simultaneously, but that's doable too. It's not officially supported by any Remote Desktop version on any Windows OS though because of licensing issues..